Feeling defeated
Heard something rather depressing today. In a meeting, a project manager asked to hire several production artists, one of the top executives went “Isn’t that what Janet and Copper are doing?”
Seriously, that sucks. I learn to live with family and friends’ blank look when I explain what I do, or “The PhotoShop go-to gal” remark. But when it’s the people whom don’t have the slightest idea what they are paying me for, now I’m really depressed.
What is a UI designer to do to get some respects? Hanging on my cubical wall are 5 on going project wireframes, black & white printouts of lines and notations. Back to back in my outlook calendar are meeting requests for upcoming usability testing.
I populate internal wiki with competitors’ UI analysis. I study leading online application trends and design patterns. I work with pm on features specs and infrastructures. Then prepare style guide, mockups and documentations for development team.
My current reading is O’Reilly’s “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web”; the next lineup is “Killer Web Content” by Gerry McGovern. And by the way, I’m enrolled in the UW’s User Centered Design graduate program starting January.
So which part of what I do qualified me a production artist?